Le Silence / Tystnaden

Anna, Ester and Joan stop at an old-fashion luxury hotel while traveling in a desolate and war-torn country whose language they cannot speak. Solitude unveils their emotional problems.

“In The Silence, Sven Nykvist and I decided to be perfectly shameless and repress nothing. And I never tire of seeing the cinematographic voluptuousness in this film again. It was absolute fun shooting The Silence.” Ingmar Bergman

“There was no contrast in this film. That’s really what we wanted, to transmit the idea of heat.” Sven Nykvist

”When trying to retrace the origin of The Silence, Bergman evoked a dream and a childhood memory: “I’m in a gigantic foreign town. On the way to a zone where something is forbidden (…) When I was ten, I started to wander (…) At first The Silence was called Timoka (…) I had seen that word in an Estonian book without knowing what it meant. And it turned out that was a name that fit a foreign city very well. In fact, it means “Meant for the hangman.”  Ingmar Bergman

“The young sister’s love scene with the barman (Birger Malmsten, aged, unrecognizable) and Ingrid Thulin’s masturbation were a scandal at the time. But their supposed eroticism conveys a terror that annihilates any sensuality.”  N.T.Bihn, Ingmar Bergman, le magicien du Nord